Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening: How I Learned the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart (8 page)

I opened the door.

“Charlie,” I called out.

The young mailman looked back at me. I held up the envelope.

“I want to mail this in the proper, dignified way that befits a friend’s accomplishments. Know what I mean?”

He removed his cap and scratched the top of his head. “Oh. All right. We can take care of that.”

After taking my letter, he continued walking up Mount Vernon. I felt that I’d made a wise decision. From now on, I was going to hold myself to certain standards.

Three days later, I was surprised to find the corner of my own envelope protruding from the little mail slot to the left side of my door. I pulled it through. Giles had marked his name out with a heavy line, replacing it with:
Mrs. Carol Wall.

My hands shook. I tore open the letter and read:

Dear Mrs. Wall,

Thank you for your note. You honor me by giving me the opportunity to tend your yard. No titles are needed. Next spring,
I believe we need to plant more hostas on the riverbank. Also, I am going to mix some chemicals to treat the spruces, with their stubborn spider mites. Your neighbor, Mr. Robert Maxim, has requested a consultation on his backyard problem. I will call on him next week, as soon as I complete some work on behalf of our grounds committee at Saint Benedict’s. I am helping with the construction and design of the new koi pond, in memory of the children of our parishioners who have “gone back.” Though this volunteer work on the committee’s Memorial Pond will take much of my free time, please remember there is always a spot reserved for your yard on my schedule. I will await your call. As always, I am available to install more flowers in your yard.

I celebrate your listening ear and understanding heart.

Sincere regards,

Your friend (“osiepa,” which means “friend” in my part of the world),

Giles Owita

A
few days later Sarah e-mailed me the first six pages of Giles’s dissertation. It was a scientific tract about potato canopies with lots of graphs and charts. There was no poetic swooning over flowers. I felt more embarrassed than ever.

I started avoiding Giles, telling myself that I was giving him space to complete the memorial pond that he’d agreed to design for our church. I immersed myself in schoolwork and taking care of my parents.

But the interlude didn’t last long. One late afternoon about a week later, I pulled my living room curtain back in time to see my “professor’s” Neon cruising past. Intrigued, I opened my front door only a crack, peering out. Giles parked at the curb in front of Sarah’s. He pulled some tools from the trunk and
disappeared around the far side of her house, toward the entrance to the meditation garden. Dick wasn’t due home for several hours because of a late appointment, so it was an open-ended evening, with takeout waiting on the kitchen counter in a bag. I heard our furnace kick on for the first time this season. Just the sound gave me a cozy, nesting feeling.

It looked like no one was home at Sarah’s house. Her porch light was on. A brief chat with Giles would fit perfectly into this lonely corner of my day. Afterward, we could both reclaim our dignity and I could pretend that my terrible faux pas had never happened. I pulled on a hooded jacket.

I walked to Sarah’s, pausing in her front yard. Her house was the largest and most elegant in the neighborhood, with a charming garden gate on each side of the lot. The entrance closest to us had a delicate trellis where the climbing roses had established themselves and appeared to be doing well. It was the first time I’d been in Sarah’s backyard in quite a while, and I felt how the garden seemed to have a soul of its own. On this autumn evening, spotlights illuminated the ghostly forms of primrose and gardenias, mulberry-colored autumn sedum, orange and yellow daylilies, and coneflowers, with their petals pointed downward, set on wiry-looking stems. A quarter moon darted in and out of the clouds.

Giles was working at the far end of the lot, near the creek, and I called to him. “Doctor Owita.”

“Mrs. Wall. It is you!” Giles said. He sounded genuinely happy to see me, and relief washed over me. I had made so many mis
steps on my way to being friends with Giles, yet I knew in this moment, and without asking, that Giles forgave me. “I should have been addressing you as doctor, all along,” I quietly insisted. “You didn’t tell me, Giles. I feel so bad about it. I hope you didn’t think I was being disrespectful. Why, in Rusinga, they would have voted me off the island!”

His laugh was rich and sincere, and it ended with a sympathetic clucking sound that I’d grown to associate with him. Oh, how I had missed that million-dollar smile. More than I realized. “Should such a small thing matter, Mrs. Wall?”

I had planned to make a little speech, in penance. I was going to mention how I’d read to him about the river birch, citing how arrogant I had been and how I made assumptions based on biases. But the words evaporated in the cool night air. My explanation would have taken a long time, and even in a picture-perfect yard like this, there was much to do. I fleetingly wondered if Giles had brought an extra pair of gloves.
I shouldn’t stay,
I told myself. But Giles didn’t seem in a hurry. He leaned his rake on the back of one of the two wrought-iron benches, which were situated opposite each other, near the gate to the creek.

“I have been working on the children’s memorial pond today, at church,” he told me as I took a seat opposite where he stood. “The plaque has just been installed. It reads, ‘For the children of Saint Benedict’s who have flown from our arms to the arms of God.’”

“That’s beautiful,” I said. “We gave a contribution. In memory of someone. Have the fish been added, yet?”

“No koi. Not yet. We are still adjusting the various elements of this new ecosystem that will symbolize so much for grieving parents. It cannot be a casual matter, balancing this system and keeping the fish alive.” Giles began to pace. He raised his eyebrows, and his expression grew brighter still as he explained that an overgrowth of algae blocking the sun was the reason that the pond was not doing well yet. “Right away, I saw the need for things like cattails and some ornamental grasses to deprive the algae of sunlight. I will drive to Blacksburg to get the water hyacinths and cattails, at the greenhouse. My wife and I will pay for them, if necessary, though I know the cost will not be much compared to all the good that will be gained.”

“I’m so happy that you’re doing this,” I said. “There are many who have suffered for years over the death of a child. This will be a chance for those parents to honor their children, and to show how they’re always remembered.”

“This is what I said at the first committee meeting. I think they may have wished me to stay on topics relating to pond environments. Some of them had heard about Lake Victoria and knew that it is called ‘the Sickly Giant,’ due to algae forming and blocking the light. When I began to talk, I chose instead to speak to the committee as a father, trying to imagine the pain that loss of a child might bring.”

“Giles, for some reason, we find that difficult to speak about in our culture.”

“Mrs. Wall, your kind listening ear has given me the courage to voice my opinions. I have been noticing this more and more.
And that is very freeing. I’m humbled when I think of parents who have truly lost their children. If Lok is lost to us, it is just for a short while. And I have no one to blame but myself.”

“Oh, Giles. I’m sure that’s not true. You were trying to do what was best for your family when you left Kenya.”

He looked to the sky once again. “I am to blame for leaving my daughter behind, in pursuit of the advanced degree. This doctorate. Yet we felt we could do much more for her by obtaining these credentials and securing teaching jobs in a university setting. I should have reminded myself that things do not always go as planned. My daughter pleaded to remain in Kenya to finish school among her many cousins and her friends. Bienta’s mother was Lok’s advocate in this, and my wife and I succumbed. We shouldn’t have. In the years since we came over, travel has become more complicated. Now our precious daughter waits for us to be successful in our efforts. She must feel abandoned, though she doesn’t say. Our lives are full of very many complications.” Giles looked away. I had never seen him like this—he seemed forlorn.

“Lok was tiny when Bienta had her,” Giles continued. “We knew a struggle lay ahead. She had arrived two months before her time. Fortunately, there was an incubator. It was the only one for many, many miles around, and our delightful, tiny Lok was placed in it at once!”

“Oh, my God,” I said aloud, imagining a place where one couldn’t take an incubator for granted.

“She was a fighter. Yes, she was!” he said. “We saw this right
from the beginning. I held Bienta’s hand each time we gazed on her. We had lost another baby, earlier, and so our hurting hearts were filled with love and longing for this tiny creature with her strong will and her tranquil face and tiny, pumping fists. We prayed so very, very hard that she would simply grow to live among us. Yet with every visit to the hospital, we saw her struggling. We feared that in spite of her tiny fists raised up, our prayers, and all our love, in the end she might
go back
.”

“Oh, Giles. That must have been so hard. But Lok’s not ‘going back.’ She’s healthy now, and all these complications are the kind that can be dealt with. She will use the innate strength you describe, to get through this trial.”

The cold was much more penetrating than I thought it would be, and I put my hood up. Giles looked at me expectantly. We always shared stories, back and forth. He had given me his, and now it was my turn to give him mine. I took a deep breath. The time had come for me to tell Giles about Barbara.

“Giles, I need to tell you something. It’s something only Dick knows. Something I think about often, but can hardly ever bring myself to speak of.”

Giles’s off-center glance reflected his curiosity.

“My sister Barbara was born in 1950, a little more than a year before me. She was a Down syndrome baby. She died of heart failure ten days before her second birthday, when I was seven months old. It was Mother’s Day, a Sunday. I don’t remember this, of course. What I know is what my parents have told me over the years. The doctor who delivered Barbara was deliberately
cruel. Apparently, he believed he was sparing my parents from forming an attachment to a child who couldn’t possibly survive. He came into my mother’s hospital room and announced to my parents that their baby girl was ‘a Mongolian idiot,’ and would ‘never amount to anything.’ They should put her in an institution and forget her, he advised. Instead, they took her home to the lovely nursery they had prepared, and a few weeks later, with high hopes in their hearts, they went to New York City, to see a specialist recommended by an army buddy and his wife who had settled there after the war. Barbara’s case was one of the milder ones, the doctor said, in the kindest and most tactful way. But heart surgery was not an option and she would not live long. My advice to you, the doctor said, is to have another baby.”

I paused. My hands trembled. I pushed my hood back, as if I’d been on the run for years and was finally ready to surrender. A gentle breeze moved through the roses. “I am the next chapter of our family story, Giles. And guilt weighs me down every day of my life. Every day I ask myself why Barbara had to die. I would have helped her had she lived. She could have counted on me. But I didn’t get the chance to tell her.”

Giles looked at me with sympathy. His heart had been tested, too. My tears began, but I found that I wasn’t ashamed of them. I wiped my face on the sleeve of my jacket. I looked up to find Giles staring fiercely into the distance.

Stabbing the air with his pointer finger for emphasis, he said, “Your sister was an Innocent. A gift from life. Such children are incapable of guile. They bring out the best in us. The highest
reaches of the heavens are reserved for them. The day your Barbara went back home, the angels welcomed her.
Our Swahili word for angel is
malaika
. They rejoiced when your sister came back to them. She is one of them now.”

“My father framed a poem about roses climbing a wall to the other side. That’s how he thought of my sister.”

“The poem brought you comfort, Mrs. Wall?”

“No. It didn’t. I thought it was sad. But I pretended for him. Flowers have always depressed me, Giles. They just make me think of my sister’s coffin. And how everything dies.”

Giles hesitated, careful about his words as always. “Every yard must have its flowers, Mrs. Wall. Did you know there are flowers that bloom at night? For example, Dutchman’s pipe cactus, dragon fruit flowers, four-o’clocks, and night gladiolus. Why not let new thoughts of all these flowers honor and console your baby sister at night, as you sleep? When you wake, go on with your happy, productive life, in which your own growing sense of joy should surely occupy an important spot and in which brightly colored blooms are not required.

“Flowers take many shapes, and there are many hues. The soil beneath our plodding feet is home to treasures as well as to many sorrows. This is very powerful, Mrs. Wall. Some may say, ‘Move on,’ but it is not so easy, is it? Sorrow follows us. The child in us is always there.”

“Thank you, Giles, for listening. You’re a good friend.”

Giles and I kept each other company in silence a little while longer. Then I waited with him while he gathered up his tools,
and walked with him to his car. My walk home from there was short, and the scent of Giles’s flowers followed me all the way.

THE ROSE BEYOND THE WALL

A P
OEM
BY
A. L. F
RINK

Near shady wall a rose once grew,

Budded and blossomed in God’s free light,

Watered and fed by the morning dew,

Shedding its sweetness day and night.

As it grew and blossomed fair and tall,

Slowly rising to loftier height,

It came to a crevice in the wall

Through which there shone a beam of light.

Onward it crept with added strength

With never a thought of fear or pride.

It followed the light through the crevice’s length

And unfolded itself on the other side.

Shall claim of death cause us to grieve

And make our courage faint and fall?

Nay! Let us faith and hope receive—

The rose still grows beyond the wall.

Scattering fragrance far and wide

Just as it did in days of yore,

Just as it did on the other side,

Just as it will forevermore.

Barbara Ann Gregory. Born: May 21, 1950

Entered Life Eternal: May 11, 1952